Faculty Fellowship Program

Faculty Fellows for 2024-25 

Kate Brodeur

Fall 2024

A Reading Clinic for the Community

November 12, 2024, 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm at the Wood County Public Library

National assessment data in elementary reading and math reflect unprecedented declines with the biggest decreases for low-performing students (National Center for Education Statistics, 2022). Following years of pandemic-interrupted education, high-dosage tutoring aligned with evidence-based practices has been identified as one of the most promising mechanisms for accelerating student learning (Annenberg, 2021). There is substantial evidence that a well-designed tutoring program can support large learning gains for a wide variety of students (Nickow, et al., 2020) and be one of the most effective interventions for students from lower-income families (Dietrichson et al., 2017). Developing and scaling up tutoring models successfully relies on a deep understanding of school and community context. 

The purpose of this project is to develop a sustainable model for a university-based reading clinic that provides local communities with equitable access to high-quality reading tutoring, aligned with the science of reading. To be truly meaningful and accessible, I will partner with community members and education stakeholders to better understand community assets to leverage, resources needed, and barriers that exist in developing a model for BGSU preservice teachers to work as tutors with K-12 students. Co-constructing this model has the greatest potential for feasibility and sustainability for all partners and holds tangible promise for contributing to the public good. 

Sidra Lawrence

Fall 2024 Fellow

Aural Technologies of Justice: The Sonics of Violence, Trauma, and Healing

February 18, 2025, 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm at Sofía Quintero Art and Cultural Center in Toledo, OH

Proceeding from the intellectual frameworks provided by trauma studies, feminist studies, and sound studies, this project discusses the relationship between forms of sonic trauma as they emerge in the judicial system, the sonics aspects of trauma recall, and sound as an ideological frame that shapes access to justice, credibility, and care. Looking specifically at the framework of sexual assault, I discuss how ideas about sound take shape through concepts of audibility and inaudibility. In this work I discuss the ways in which the dominant western oppositional hierarchy of silence and speech shape survivors’ capacity to convey meaningful expression through non-narrative modalities. In order to productively engage with these concepts I propose both an intellectual inquiry in the form of a written chapter, and a public-facing community project. I invite students, BGSU community members, and residents of northwest Ohio to contribute to a multi-modal performance that includes sound installation, movement, silence, photography, visual art, or live sound to as part of creating a healing aesthetic. Ultimately this project addresses the limits of verbal language in the narrative of remembered violence, and explore the possibilities of performative expression as a means to justice.  

Thomas Roberts

Spring 2025

Disrupting the STEM status quo through equity-centered practices

March 24, 2025, 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm at the Way Public Library in Perrysburg, OH

I plan to use the ICS fellowship to build reciprocal relationships with the elementary science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education community while conducting participatory ethnographic research. STEM education receives significant attention from education policymakers. Despite the calls for more students participating in STEM learning, STEM remains unevenly accessible and often exclusionary to large populations. Unfortunately, this maintains the STEM status quo. Through this project, I will visit elementary STEM teachers to learn from their practices and to offer resources (e.g., curricular materials, professional development) and serve as a thought partner for their STEM planning. The specific goals of the project are: (1) to learn from elementary STEM teachers’ practices as they facilitate STEM lessons so that I can better operationalize good, equitable STEM instruction in both research and in my teaching of undergraduate education majors; and, (2) to understand how elementary teachers develop their professional knowledge to teach elementary STEM, including exploring the role of systems (e.g., state mandates, district policies, training opportunities) that empower or constrain their growth. By building this reciprocal relationship, I seek to empower teachers as we collaborate on research to not only further scholarship, but also to share research-based equitable STEM teaching practices to ensure each and every learner has access to high-quality integrated STEM learning experiences. Through this collaborative approach, I will attempt to disrupt the STEM status quo through the research and practice partnerships.

Maegan Docherty

Spring 2025

Engaging with community perspectives on gun violence in Toledo, Ohio

April 16, 2025 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm  at the Toledo Lucas County Public Library

This project will reach beyond the academy by collaborating with the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement (MONSE) in Toledo, Ohio to engage community perspectives on gun violence in Toledo. Specifically, I will speak with different community members, violence survivors and victims, leaders, and agencies about their perspectives on gun violence in Toledo, and what can be done to prevent future violence and support current survivors and victims’ families. Efforts will be made to ensure that diverse community members are included in these conversations, by partnering with different groups in Toledo who are working with MONSE (e.g., Reinvest Toledo, Toledo Public Schools, Goodwill Industries, religious institutions), as well as other relevant groups identified during these conversations. I will build both civic and intellectual community by engaging people in discussions about gun violence and collaborating with community partners on a report and research action plan for gun violence in Toledo. This collaboration will involve mutual sharing of expertise and lived experience between myself and community members and agencies. Importantly, this work will build on and enhance ongoing gun violence initiatives within Toledo, and will engage MONSE and others to ensure that the work benefits those directly involved in the project as well as the broader community. The guiding framework for this project is community-based participatory action research, and this project aligns with ICS’s vision and principles by empowering those affected by gun violence to lead the conversation, develop research that benefits the community, and combine lived experience with empirical inquiry.